In The Beginning

The History of Lodge Caldercruix St John doesn’t begin in1923 [The year of our foundation] as you would expect, but the year previous in 1922. 

An old retired Master Mason from the village of Caldercruix became concerned for the welfare of his next door neighbour whom he believed to be a member of the craft. 

It was very apparent to him that his neighbour and family had unfortunately fell on hard times, were in desperate financial difficulty and were in urgent need of relief and support. 

As a means of offering his Neighbour financial assistance this old Master Mason arranged for a support fund to be raised by setting up a petition in the village enquiring if any Masonic brethren in the village were in a position to offer financial support for his distressed neighbour. 

When Bro. T P. McCafferty saw the list of names he was surprised at the number of Masons in the village. He called a Meeting of these Brethren in the Craig Institute, Caldercruix, & put forward the idea of forming a Masonic Lodge. 

 This idea met with great enthusiasm, but unfortunately there were no premises in the village suitable for holding Masonic Meetings. It was agreed to form a Caldercruix Masonic Fund, Whist Drives & Dances were organised to raise funds, but when the Provincial Grand Lodge of Lanarkshire Middle Ward learned what was being done, they declared the Fundraising group an unauthorized body who could not use Masonry in this way and as a result the Provincial Grand Lodge of Lanarkshire took possession of the money collected. 

In the opening paragraphs in the first account of the lodge history you will notice that the Lodge had to deal with its first problem even before they got off the ground when the PGL took possession of the money raised to try and set up the lodge. The ticket in the photograph below is I believe a ticket for one of the fundraising events to form the lodge. For as you can see the ticket is dated February 1922 and of course we know that the Lodge was formed in 1923.